Our Companion Parties in the Western Hemisphere (1942)

From the February 1942 issue of the Socialist Standard

Recent letters from the Workers' Socialist Party of the U.S.A. give some interesting details of their activities and progress during the past few months.

Slowly bit surely their journal, the Western Socialist, is reaching an ever widening circle of readers. New contacts have been made in Colorado, Missouri, Tennessee, etc., and their journal is finding its way even to such remote places as Dutch Harbour in the Aleutian Islands

Debates and Meetings

The Catholic Worker sent their co-founder, Peter Maurin, from New York City to Boston on November 14th, 1941, to debate with the W.S.P. on "Catholic Communism versus Socialism." The W.S.P., commenting on the debate, state: "We analysed the Labour Encyclicals of the Pope in which the Catholic Worker claims to base its action. The general idea behind this organisation is to foster co-operative farms, soup kitchens, Catholic trade unions, and plenty of prayer. It is meant to attract the awakening Catholic workers and to emasculate their efforts for social emancipation." The attendance, and the resulting sales of literature were fair.

On November 23rd they debated successfully with the "Socialist Party of America," whose representative declared: "There are going to be wages paid in the Socialism I want" . . . "Investment banking and money will be absolutely necessary." The W.S.P. had no difficulty in dealing effectively with such nostrums. The Boston local, under whose auspices the debate was held, report that literature sales and the collection were excellent.

Harvard University sent three speakers in December 14th to debate with the W.S.P. on "Only Socialism can abolish war." The U.S.A. had already been a war a week, and despite the general excitement which prevailed, the attendance was satisfactory, and the literature sales were good.

Their outdoor propaganda season was the best record. It was brought to a close of November 9th with an informal debate with the American Action Associates (a Catholic Action—isolationist group). This took place on Boston Common, and although the day was cold and drizzly, our comrades state: "We held an enthusiastic crowd of three hundred for almost three hours."

The Western Socialist

The latest issue of the Western Socialist has reached us, and although it was published before the American-Japanese clash, it contains a revealing article on the reasons why the clash of these two rival powers was inevitable.

Exceptionally good articles dealing with the status of the negro population of the U.S.A., and the position of the Jews in Capitalist society, are an attractive feature.

There is an outstanding article entitled: "We who are about to Live." It epitomises the attitude of that section of international youth which is becoming aware that only Socialism can remove the causes of the poverty, wars, and frustration, from which they suffer.

Free Offer

W.S.P. offer a free specimen copy of the Western Socialist. We urge our American readers in particular to take advantage of it, and for their convenience we set out below the address to which to send requests. For the benefit of our readers who are disposed to become subscribers at once, we also set out particulars of subscription rates.

News from Canada

Since the war started, our companion Party, the Socialist Party of Canada, has undergone many vicissitudes. Activities in most of their locals have been curtailed very severely, but contact is maintained with the headquarters in Winnipeg, and the locals undertake the distribution of THE SOCIALIST STANDARD in their respective territories.

Recent information from the General Secretary of the Party, however, reveals that activity is on the increase, notably in Victoria and Winnipeg. In the latter city the local has commenced an economic class which is proving attractive to members and sympathisers.

It is a source of great satisfaction to us in Britain that the S.P. of C. is continuing its support to the W.S.P. of the U.S.A. by means of financial aid, and articles for the Western Socialist.

To our comrades in the Western Hemisphere we extend our fraternal greetings, knowing that they will carry on with the only task worth while—propagation of Socialist ideas.

In a later issue we hope to bring our readers news of our companion parties in Australia and New Zealand.

H. G. Holt, Overseas Secretary.

Please send your requests for a free specimen copy of the Western Socialist to Workers' Socialist Party of the U.S.A.,

                       12, Hayward Place,

                                 Boston, Mass., U.S.A.

Subscriptions, which should be sent to the above address, are as follows :—

• 18 issues (postage included)       . . . . . . 1 dollar 
• 12 issues         ditto                      . . . . . . 75 cents.  
• 4 issues         ditto                      . . . . . . 25 cents.

Letter from Ireland (1964)

From the March 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

Comrades, here is a brief outline of the activities undertaken by the World Socialist Party in Northern Ireland since their "Seven Days for Socialism" campaign last October. Immediately following the Belfast Branch arranged a series of lectures putting the Socialist attitude on aspects of capitalism. Every member of the branch took an active part in carrying out this programme, and every effort was made to bring the public in. The series produced some new, good speaking talent.

Regular outdoor meetings were maintained every Sunday at Customs House Square until the first week in December when bad weather set in. These meetings will be resumed as soon as possible. The canvassing of the SOCIALIST STANDARD in the slumland of Belfast has been maintained. The branch has discussed methods of increasing its efforts in this direction.

The Armagh Branch has also maintained its SOCIALIST STANDARD sales drive into surrounding areas despite a multitude of obstacles. The World Socialist Party is well known but unfortunately for the purposes of debate, well ostracised. This branch has recently been strengthened by the return of our Comrade Carson (late Coventry member) who should give added force to their activities.

What of the immediate future? A series of lectures on Marxism commenced in January and the debate between the W.S.P. of Ireland and the N.C.L.C. took place. (Details of this in the next News Letter). In the forthcoming local elections the W.S.P. intend to field five candidates. This will make them the third largest party in the contest. Quite a lot of local publicity should follow.

It is intended to run a Summer School this year. However, it is much too early to give any clear details. The necessary information will be given in due course to all Companion Parties.

That about sums it up. It only remains to convey Belfast's greetings to comrades everywhere and to return to the job of demolishing capitalism.

Fraternally,

D.J. McCarthy (Belfast)

Syndicalism (1982)

From the November 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

Whatever its theoretical mistakes, syndicalism has a place in the history of the working class, especially in the "Latin" countries (France, Italy, Spain, South America).  Syndicalisme is in fact the French word for trade-unionism and it was in France, where it was known as "revolutionary syndicalism" to distinguish it from ordinary trade-unionism, that the doctrine originated. In 1906 the main French trade union grouping at that time, the General Confederation of Labour (CGT), adopted the famous Charter of Amiens.

The doctrine is also sometimes called "anarcho-syndicalism" because many of its leading advocates were anarchists. The Charter of Amiens, however, which inspired similar trade-union movements in other countries, was not as "anarchist" as it is sometimes made out to be. It did not repudiate political action, as anarchists do, but merely said that political considerations should not enter into the trade union struggle as this would divide, and so weaken, workers in face of their employers. After stating that the very fact of having to work for wages imposes on workers "whatever their opinions or their political and philosophical views, the duty to belong to the essential grouping which is the trade union", it went on:

Therefore, so far as individual members are concerned, Congress declares complete freedom for every Trade Unionist to participate, outside of the trade organisation, in any forms of struggle in accordance with his political or philosophical views, confining itself only to asking him, in return, not to introduce into the trade union the opinions which he professes outside it.

This of course is a sound principle and has always been the basis of participation of individual members of the SPGB in trade unions. 

The original French CGT had an attitude towards the state — complete independence from it, as well as from all political parties — which was also correct. In their view, the role of a trade union was to defend working class wages and conditions through direct negotiations with employers and not by bringing pressure to bear on the state to pass reform measures. This elementary principle of trade unionism has been largely forgotten today (though not by socialists active in their unions). As a result the TUC in Britain, for instance, has become more of a reformist, than a trade union, organisation as well as becoming partially integrated into the state machine.

The great mistake of French syndicalism was its theory that capitalism could be overthrown by a more or less spontaneous general strike, whereas in fact this can only be done by a working class majority, which wants and understands socialism, taking democratic action. Syndicalism was also confused — and its remnants still are — over the nature of the society that should be established in place of capitalism. Its declaration, in the Charter of Amiens, that "the trade union, now a unit of resistance, will in the future be the unit of production and distribution, the basis of social organisation" was wrong, as it was to carry over into future society the occupational divisions of workers under capitalism. Socialism, as the word itself implies, is the ownership and control of the means of production by society as a whole. Trade union ownership and control, as implied by such syndicalist slogans as "the mines to the miners", would not be socialism.

Syndicalism died out as the predominant doctrine in France with the First World War, which a majority of CGT leaders and militants supported, and the Russian revolution, which most of the minority, mistakenly believed to be the overthrow of capitalism they had been working for.

Adam Buick

The Churches (1967)

Book Review from the July 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Churches and the Labour Movement by Stephen Mayor (Independent Press, 36s.)

A Red Flag flying from the tower of an English parish church, a "Socialist" Archbishop of Canterbury, and even more startling a "communist" Dean. These and similar things puzzled and intrigued people in the Thirties. They were always good for a headline in the Sunday papers, very useful in fact when more orthodox sensations were in short supply.

There was much alarmed speculation; 'was the C of E going Bolshie?" or "was this just another example of the decadence of the times?" Others built up false hopes that the bastions of privilege were being breached at least. All seemed to be amazed that they got away with it, and were not expelled from the Church.

There was in fact nothing particularly remarkable about all this, "Socialist" Bishops were by no means new. The Christian Socialist Movement, or rather a succession of movements with different titles but roughly the same aims, had existed from the early 19th century. They had been influenced by the theories of Fourier and Owen, and much of their earlier efforts were directed toward Co-operative schemes.

Their "Socialism" was in most cases a form of Radicalism, and they later played a part in the formation and growth of the Labour Party. The main stream was High Anglican and from the start they were wealthy and influential. Always small in numbers, their wealth and contacts gave them a say in affairs that belied their numbers.

Marx argued that the "movement arose from the guilty conscience of the upper classes": "Christian Socialism is but the holy water with which the priest consecrates the heart-burnings of the aristocrat." However there was much sincerity, and no little self-sacrifice, by many of its members. There had been bitter opposition to them in the early days, but by this century they had become accepted as part of the scene.

This is one of many movements described in the book The Churches and the Labour Movement by Stephen Mayor. The author accepts all the usual definitions of class without question. He talks of working class, lower middle, middle and so on. His definition of the Labour Movement is just the Labour Party. He deals at great length with such subjects as the influence of various religious denominations on the Trade Unions, and gives a great deal of information on minor aspects of working class life in the 19th century.

Les Dale 

New Pamphlet: Socialist Principles Explained (1976)

From the March 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

The original pamphlet under the title The Socialist Party of Great Britain—Its Principles and Policy was first published in 1934 and ran through four editions up to 1956. It has been out of stock since the mid-'sixties. Therefore this new pamphlet Socialist Principles Explained, is long overdue. It is completely re-written.

It is overdue also in the political sense as a counterblast to the confusion and total lack of principle, which characterize all the other political parties. They are all dedicated to the expedient of the moment. They all depend upon working-class apathy and political ignorance, to continue their mandate to run capitalism.

It speaks volumes for the great gulf of differences which separate the Party for Socialism from the reformist parties (whether alleged labour or avowedly capitalist) that we, in 1976, enthusiastically proclaim the validity of our Principles, which were drawn up in 1904, while they cannot remember any further back than the last election and have no real commitment to anything they said last month.

Our Declaration of Principles identifies the class division in capitalist society. It shows why class antagonism must remain for as long as capitalism remains. It points to the ending of classes and class antagonism through the establishment  of common ownership of the means of production and distribution. It records the historic fact that capitalism is the last class system and repudiates all leadership. It makes clear the nature and function of the state machine and the need for a conscious working class to democratically gain political power in order to overthrow capitalism and thereby end political power. It shows that logically political parties must represent class interests and that no party can represent both the working class and the capitalist class, because their interests are conflicting. There can be only one Party expressing the interests of the workers.

The new pamphlet develops all these points with concise argument. For those countless people with a vague and emotional attachment to changing things and solving social problems, it sheds a flood of new light on the world because it supplies the answer and explains principles. As we say in the Preface, it is essential reading for those considering applying for membership. As only clear-thinking Socialists can work for Socialism, the most vital need is to spread Socialist understanding. This pamphlet makes a valuable contribution to that end.

Harry Baldwin 

Manchester Workers Crowd to Party Meetings (1939)

From the July 1939 issue of the Socialist Standard

Those already acquainted with the Socialist Standard and the Socialist Party will know that until now all the editorial, propaganda and organisational work of the Party has been carried out on a purely voluntary basis. We have never concealed the fact that, as far as we are concerned, it was a case of making a virtue of necessity. For, although we have recognised for a long time the desirability, not say the necessity, of comrades devoting their full time to working for Socialism, we have never been in a position to make this possible.

For the first time in the history of the Party the energy and self-sacrifice of Party members and sympathisers has made possible the appointment, for an experimental period, of a full-time organiser-propagandist for the Provinces. During the last two weeks Comrade A. Turner has been in Manchester, and has been devoting his energies to propagating the case for Socialism, and in assisting the Manchester branch in its organisational work. In spite of the difficulties which are bound to arise in connection with what is for the Party a new venture, the results so far more than justify the most sanguine anticipations. If members and sympathisers of the Party could have witnessed, as the writer of these notes did, the keen and intelligent interest with which almost a 1,000 workers from the Fairey Aviation Works listened to the Socialist case; if they could have seen the smaller, but no less keenly interested audience at lunch-hour meetings outside the Manchester Tramways Dept. and finally, could have seen the large and attentive audiences that attended our Sunday afternoon and evening meetings in Platt Fields and Stevenson Square, their hearts would have leaped with joy!

But the results so far obtained have not been confined to well attended propaganda meetings. From quite reliable sources we know that the series of dinner-hour meetings held outside the works mentioned above has resulted in keen discussions of the Party's case within the works. Many workers who, until now, were ignorant even of the existence of the Party are debating with their workmates the policy of the Party in relation to war and the other social problems with which the workers of Manchester, as elsewhere, are faced.

At the last weekly meeting of the Manchester branch more visitors were in attendance than ever before in the history of the branch. As a result of special appeals and announcements we hope that this week's attendance will cause serious concern — to find the necessary accommodation! A series of lectures has been started, and will be given every Monday at 8.30 at the party rooms, 15a, Shudehill, Manchester. All readers of the Socialist Standard in Manchester and district are heartily invited to attend and bring along their friends.

Last, but by no means least, and in spite of the relatively unfavourable weather conditions, we have to report record sales of literature. During the fortnight Comrade Turner has been in Manchester, the branch, with his assistance, has managed to dispose of £5 2s. 6d. of literature.

This, then, is a brief, and we fear, inadequate report of the beginnings of an effort which it is hoped may become a permanent feature of our Party life. Here is something which is worth while, and which deserves and demands the whole-hearted support of every member and sympathiser of the Party. With the active, and above all, the financial support of all concerned, it will be possible to gave not only one full-time worker for Socialism, but many. What is now being done in Manchester can then also be done in every important industrial centre of Great Britain, and we shall the be an appreciable step forward in what is at the moment our most pressing task in the struggle for Socialism—the building of a strong Socialist Party.

Arthur Mertons

Editorial: Police Spies and the Communist Movement (1930)

Editorial from the August 1930 issue of the Socialist Standard

On March 6th the American Communists organised a demonstration in Union Square, New York City. The police were ordered to clear the streets on the ground that the Communists had not obtained a permit for a parade. Five Communist leaders were arrested and the crowd were beaten up by the police with great brutality.

That, of course, is a common story. There is, however, an additional feature of some interest. The Police Commissioner, Mr. Grover Whalen, declared on the following day that he had his agents inside the Communist Party keeping him informed as to all their plans and the movements of their leaders. He was greatly amused because the uniformed police, in order not to give away the spies to the Communists, cracked their heads along with the others. Mr. Whalen has also supplied to employers the names of workers who are members of the Communist Party.

We refer to this because it illustrates once more the danger to the workers of organisations which advocate violence, and attempt to carry on illegal activities in the absurd belief that they can do so in secret. Illegal activities result invariably in some unfortunate workers falling into the hands of the authorities and paying with imprisonment for the dangerous policies of their leaders. In this country during recent months there have been several heavy sentences on workers caught distributing inflammatory leaflets to soldiers. The Communist Party leads its unfortunate victims into trouble and can do nothing whatever to help them. Even if they succeeded in getting in touch with soldiers or sailors, it is almost certain that the latter would be discovered. It is exceedingly doubtful whether any of the so-called activities of the Communists are secret from the police. The only people who appear to be kept in the dark about the activities of their leaders, are the rank and file members of the Communist Parties.

A few years ago the American police were actually able to get one of their agents sent as a Communist delegate, to represent the American Communists at a Congress in Moscow.

The only sound line for the socialist movement in countries such as Great Britain and the U.S.A. is to organise on a basis which makes secrecy unnecessary. This rules out the Communist policy of street fighting, but that policy is one which is of no use to the workers. On the contrary, it has, in many countries, often been engineered by the authorities themselves, through their inside agents.

Double Jeopardy (1993)

Book Review from the November 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

Double Jeopardy. The Retrial of the Guildford Four by Ronan Bennett. (Penguin Books £4.95)

On 5 October 1974, history, prodded by events in Northern Ireland and served by an IRA gang, visited Guildford. Bombs were left in two public houses and seven people were murdered and ten times that number injured.

The anger of the bombers was reciprocated in the subsequent thuggery of the police, in the frame-up of three innocent men and one innocent woman all signally undistinguished in any ability to defend themselves, in a remarkably incurious judge and a jury of people who knew that British justice does not make mistakes.

But British justice had made yet another mistake and, after that, the mistakes kept happening and they were generally facilitated by the Labour Party's anti-Irish Prevention of Terrorism Act. But the police had been too undiscriminating, too anxious for convictions and their choice of victims were so lacking in any vestige of reality that questions were bound to arise.

Anyone familiar with IRA organization knows that "hoods" (IRA-speak for ordinary criminals) are not, for obvious reasons, welcome in the organization. One of the Guildford Four, Conlon, in his book, Proved Innocent, admits that he and Paul Hill were involved in petty crime, heavy drinking and drugs. Judith Ward lived in a world of drug-induced make-believe and Armstrong, whose confession started the ball rolling, is described by Bennett thus:

"By his own admission he was at the time a habitual drug-user, taking anything and everything he could lay his hands on. He lived with motley crews in squats and abandoned houses in the Kilburn-Cricklewood area, he signed on, he shoplifted from supermarkets and fantasized with his friends about 'big scores'."

If the police and the judiciary were prepared to see these unlikely characters as IRA bombers many others were sceptical and a number of people who knew their way around started looking at the police case. The upshot was that after nearly fifteen years in prison, the Guildford Four, like the Maguire Seven and the Birmingham Six, were exonerated. They had won a famous victory over British Injustice!

The be-wigged fraternity who administer the rules of British capitalism were not amused. Bennett argues that senior figures in the judiciary relayed comment about the guilt of the Four on a lobby basis. Some, like the Recorder of London, Sir James Meskim, voiced his bitterness, inferring that the Four were really guilty, but, after a newspaper article claimed that some of the Four were going to sue, he retracted his statement.

Lord Denning, paragon of the British legal system, revealed the arrogance and bitterness that lay under his wig when he told the Spectator that it would have been better of the Birmingham Six had been hanged so as to avoid damaging campaigns on behalf of plainly guilty men. It was the attempt by British justice to retrieve the situation through indirectly re-indicting the Guildford Four that is the substance of this book. Bennett, with skill and insight, reveals a squalid conspiracy of legal eagles, journalistic liars and the police to tailor the finding of a subsequent trial of three of the many police officers who were instrumental in kitting out the Guildford Four so as to make it appear that the Four were guilty.

Socialists have no illusions whatsoever about the justice enshrined in the code of rules needed to run a system based on theft and exploitation. But Bennett's exposition of this particular legal scam is an interesting read and one that shows that, in court, scoundrels are not confined to the dock.

Richard Montague

Manifesto of the Socialist Party of Ireland (1950)

From the May 1950 issue of the Socialist Standard

What a welter of violence and confusion is suggested by the term "Irish Politics." It brings to mind Sinn Fein, the Easter rising, De Valera, Home Rule, Fine Gael, Costello, Black and Tans, Irish Free State, Fianna Fail, Connolly, Ulster, Cumman nan Gaedheal and a host of other things that are difficult to sort and see in their proper perspective. Why is the country divided into Eire and Northern Ireland? What are Fine Gael and Fianna Fail? Who are Mulcahy and McGilligan? What is Vocationalism? These are questions that it is difficult to answer from the news and reports contained in English newspapers.

Our companion party, The Socialist Party of Ireland, has published its manifesto and all these questions are answered in language that is simple to understand. Our Irish comrades draw no punches. They take each of the Irish political parties including Labour and Communist, both in Eire and in Northern Ireland, and they lay them wide open to show what they are and what interests they serve. The manifesto shows us the condition of the Irish workers before and since the establishment of the Republic. It tells of the differences between the two Labour Parties in Northern Ireland and the two Trade Union Congresses that function there. It treats of the "Border Question" and the way in which it is used to confuse the Irish workers. From this manifesto we learn of "Vocationalism," a peculiarity (?) of Eire politics, which, upon analysis by our comrades, turns out to be nothing more nor less than the "Corporate State."

This is a pamphlet well worth reading by workers in all parts of the world. Its language is forceful and it hits out at all the Irish confusion-mongers and enemies of the working class in that island. Its statements are proved by quotations from the mouths of politicians that it condemns. It is a welcome addition to a Socialist library.

You should read these 28 pages of information-packed writing. The price is only 6d. plus postage.

W. Waters

The Three Pillars of Marxism (1995)

From the June 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

According to all the political pundits, the collapse of state capitalism (or "communism" to them) in Eastern Europe and elsewhere represented a refutation of the theories of Karl Marx. Needless to say, not a shred of evidence derived from Marx's writings has ever been produced to support this view. The main theories of Marx are as sound as ever.

To be a socialist is not to be chapter-and-verse Marxist spouting quotations from the works of Marx and Engels at every given opportunity, rather in the manner of Jehovah's Witnesses, whose ability to regurgitate passages from the bible compensates for their general lack of understanding of life. The Socialist Party is indeed Marxist, but in the sense that we agree with the bases of Marx's main theories and apply these to all aspects of society. A knowledge of Marx's view is, therefore, a useful adjunct to understanding the case for socialism.

Broadly, the essential principles of Marx's theory are three — the materialist conception of history, the class struggle and theory of surplus value. They do not exist independently, but are interrelated and one cannot be used without reference to the others.

The materialist conception of history argues that the general course of historical development is ultimately determined by the changing character of the powers of production.

Productive powers are simply the human command over nature and its resources that enable humans to live. As the powers of production develop, there is also a change in the class structure of human society, and political structures and social ideas change accordingly. Throughout history, as people have developed new and improved ways of tapping and harnessing the world's resources with a greater productive output, there have been corresponding changes in social and economic relationships. This is because any advance in the way people exploit the world's resources, any development in human ingenuity in the arts of producing and distributing wealth, requires a more complex system of social organisation.

Marx saw human history as a succession of epochs, each characterised by humankind's advancing knowledge of the productive arts. In past history, Marx identified three phases of development following the break-up of the classless tribal communism under which all humans originally lived: societies based on slave labour; feudal society, where labourers worked the land giving a share of what they produced to lords and barons for the privilege, and society as we know it, based on wage labour.

These three broad phases Marx saw as paving the way for a fourth, in which "pre-history" would end and true human history would begin — Socialism — a society based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing wealth, a moneyless society free of rank and privilege and of exploitation by any dominant class. Marx saw socialism as a society in which each would take from the stockpile of communal wealth according to their needs and plough back into society according to their physical and mental ability.

Marx believed that each economic phase of human development went hand-in-hand with a particular political structure. Slavery went with the despotic states and belligerent empires of the ancient world; serfdom was accompanied by the feudal system that based rights, privileges and duties on the tenure of the land; and the wage system (capitalism), where propagandists claim is the economic system for political democracy, allows its subjects certain legal and political rights. Capitalism, however, is as exploitative as all preceding systems, surviving by living parasite-like off the back of the majority working class who must continually sell their mental and physical powers to live.

Marx believed that a democratic society would only come about when the means of production and distribution were collectively owned and their fruits freely available to all.

Class struggle

Marx's theory of the class struggle ties in with the materialist conception of history. For Marx, conflict had been the dynamic for human progress. In human history there was no smooth transition from one historical epoch to another. The dominant class withstood change even when their system of authority ceased to be a method for advancing the powers of production and became a hindrance to their improved use.

Therefore, once a ruling class had outlived its usefulness, the productive powers having reached a potential it could no longer accommodate, it had to be removed from power by the class below, the class with an improved method of organising production and distribution of wealth.

The ancient and classical empires which operated a system of slavery were overthrown by the lords and barons of the feudal system, and the feudal aristocracy was in turn overthrown by the burgeoning merchant and capitalist class, with their improved system of production, but for profit not use.

The capitalist class, Marx argued, could only be overthrown by the working class, the "proletariat", the exploited majority. Marx believed it was the responsibility, the "historic mission", of the working class to see the forces of production and distribution fully socialised by becoming the common property of the whole of society.

The fourth stage of human history will be when true human history begins, because a victory by the working class over the capitalist class would unchain the powers of production and because a society of free associated labour would leave no subject class capable of being exploited. Once the working class had consolidated their position, classless society would spring up, free of rank and privilege, with production unfettered by the bondage of the money system, and with the exploitation of one section of society by another expunged for ever.

Surplus Value

Marx's third general theory is that of surplus value. In the simplest terms, Marx realised that the wage slaves, the people who needed to work to exist but couldn't work unless they exchanged their mental and physical powers for a wage, were continually being exploited. This is because the capitalists, by virtue of their ownership of the means of producing wealth, appropriate a share of the product of their labour.

Because capitalists have the upper hand, stemming from their ownership of the means of wealth production, they are able to buy a workers' power to work on terms favourable to themselves, paying the worker less than the value of what they produce. The difference between what workers are paid for their labour power, and the price the capitalist gets for the finished commodity, once overheads have been taken care of, is what Marx called surplus value — the source of profit, in a sense wide enough to include rents and interest as well as industrial and commercial profits.

The reason the majority working class have never posed a threat, so far, to the system that exploits them is because most believe there is no alternative system. The explanation for this can be found in Marx's materialist conception of history. Marx observed that the ruling class of any historical epoch controlled not only the economic sphere of society. Their influence extended further. They perpetuated their own philosophy and ideas that justified their position as masters. So prevalent have been their ideas that so far the subject class take them for granted but this is being continually undermined by the contradictions of capitalism.

Marxism is not a dogma, but a system for the understanding of human history and society. It basically asserts that as securing the means of living is the predominant influence in human life, it has to be the most dominant historical influence.

John Bissett

What will they put in place of Keynes? (1976)

From the November 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

Except in the Socialist Party of Great Britain, Keynes has for forty years dominated the British scene — the economists and politicians, the Tory, Labour and Liberal parties (including the Labour Party's "left-wing" fringes and hangers-on), the TUC and trade unions, all (with few exceptions) swallowed the Keynesian nostrum that full employment can be maintained and crises and depressions avoided by keeping up "demand": giving people "more money to spend", as the Labour Party defined it. All it meant in practice was "printing more money" — inflation — with the result that prices are now nine times what they were in 1938.

It has received such a battering that its adherents have deserted in droves. Not quite all, however; there are still groups such as the Labour Party "left wing", the Bourbons of the economic world, who still go on mouthing the old incantations as if nothing had happened.

Now however comes their problem. What are they to put in its place? Several new nostrums, or rather old ones revived, have been offered. Sir Keith Joseph, representing one wing of the Tory Party, puts forward his "social market" policy which means going back to a less-controlled and more competitive capitalism but with welfare provision for the needy.

Professor R. R. Neild (The Times, 30th September 1976) leans in the opposite direction. Arguing that British capitalism cannot stand up to competition from Japan, Germany and other more efficient and cheaper producers, he wants the adoption of wholesale, long-period "protection" to keep out cheap imports and enable home industries to be rebuilt and modernized behind a protective wall. He recognizes, as Marx did a century ago, that it is only the cheap producers, able to dominate the world markets, who want "free trade". He thinks that the objections of the European Economic Community can be overcome.

Doubtless the Labour and TUC advocates of import controls will rally round the doctrine. Professor Neild is the repentant Keynesian who wrote to The Times on 26th Feb 1974 announcing that he and other economists had deserted Keynes and had come to the conclusion that "its application in policy making has been a major cause of Britain's post-war economic troubles".

Behind the "Times."

The Times and its Economics Editor, Peter Jay, have also been moving backwards. They want something like the restriction on currency issue exercised in the 19th century by the gold standard, with a Currency Commission to do the job. They have gone a long way from the Times editorial of 15th October 1968 which dismissed as a "crude error" the belief that "price inflation could be tempered by printing fewer notes". Incidentally, Peter Jay (30th September 1976) fears that the Labour government will revert to the "expansionist" doctrine and produce a big new surge of inflation in 1977.

For the moment the Labour government says it has set its face against that policy. The Prime Minister, Callaghan, in his speech to the Labour Party Conference declared: "The option of spending our way out of a recession existed no longer." (Financial Times, 29th Sept.) Promising no more borrowing (followed a day later by news of an application to borrow 2,300 millions from the International Monetary Fund) he also made a cryptic reference to the Labour government having "even borrowed ideas" presumably meaning that he at least has discovered that the Keynesian doctrines are fallacious. But what he went on to offer was the policy of enabling companies to make bigger profits — the same old capitalism.

Against him are other Labour Party groups who think that the remedy is "socialism", meaning more state capitalism; but Jack Jones, General Secretary of the Transport Workers' Union, promptly punctured this belief. Speaking at the Labour Party Conference he said: "If we had public control of the lot we would still need to get the balance of payments, the level of borrowing and investment right before we could get a lasting cure of the inflation problem." (The Times, 30 Sept.) He called it "socialism" but has to recognize that it would be capitalism.

There is of course one idea that none of them has borrowed or will look at — the Socialist idea put forward by Marx, that there are no ways of making capitalism work in a way satisfactory for the working class.

Edgar Hardcastle

What is a Commodity? (1951)

From the October 1951 issue of the Socialist Standard

Often when discussing with friends, sympathisers and others we use the term, "commodity." This seems a very simple word, easy to understand, but we wonder how often it is misunderstood. We fear, very often. Let us therefore examine the question for a while.

The first essential characteristic of a commodity is that it is something produced primarily for sale at a profit. That is the object of its production. For the capitalist, if there is no profit there will be no production.

Commodities must, of course, be useful things, otherwise they could not be sold. But all useful things are not commodities. The air we breathe, for example, is the most useful thing of all, but it is not sold. We can have what we want of it without let or hindrance. We do not doubt if capitalists could monopolise the air, they would do so and we should have to buy it at so much a breathful. Also, when we say that commodities must be useful, this statement is capable of some amplification. It would be truer to say that some people consider them to be of use. Take, for example, patent medicines. It has been shown quite often that some patent medicines, far from being useful are, in fact, harmful. But still, Mrs. Jones buys regularly a bottle of Blogg's Backache Pills which may do her a lot of harm, quite confident that they will make her young and sprightly again. Or take the atomic bomb. This is obviously very harmful to the mass of the population, but for a minority, the capitalist class, it is useful, in that it defends their position of wealth and privilege against rival capitalist powers. And so, the question of use must be dealt with carefully.

We said earlier that a commodity is something that is produced for sale. This does not mean that everything that is produced is a commodity. If, for example, with our simple tools we make ourselves a chair at home for our own use, that is not a commodity. It has not been produced for sale. It may be equal in every way to the chairs on sale in a shop, but not having been produced for sale, it ranks only as a use-value.

Commodities are a fundamental form peculiar to the capitalist system. They only existed in chattel slavery and feudalism as by-products, the motive of production being the satisfaction of needs. It is true that under feudalism and chattel slavery there was a privileged class but their privilege came from the ownership of land, not the ownership of money as under capitalism. Under feudalism the serfs could be certain of the means of subsistence, mean as they were. Under capitalism no worker can be certain of them unless he can sell his mental or physical energies for a wage.

We are sometimes asked if rare works of art are commodities. The answer is, No. Another quality that a commodity must have is that it must be capable of reproduction. If an article cannot be reproduced it cannot rank as a commodity.

All commodities are not necessarily tangible things. There are, for example, services. If we purchase a ticket to enable us to travel on the railway, we are really purchasing a commodity, that is, the use of the railway to carry us from one place to another. The same thing applies to services like those of a chimney sweep, or a hairdresser, or a concert singer and many other things. These services conform to the definition of a commodity in that they are useful, they can be reproduced, but they are produced solely for sale or exchange.

Let us now come to what, for the capitalist, must be the most important commodity of all—the labour power of the workers. This is the point at which we disagree with the non-Marxian economists. They do not recognise the existence of labour-power as distinct from labour. We claim that the worker does not sell his labour to the capitalist, but his energies—his power to labour. When we offer ourselves for employment we have no labour to sell but the ability to labour—our labour power. And labour-power is another commodity like all other commodities, with one important exception. It produces more value than it contains itself. It provides the capitalist with his wealth. It produces what we call surplus value, that is, the value over and above what the worker takes in the form of wages. For the capitalist, all efforts are directed towards increasing the amount of surplus value produced by the workers.

We invite you to join with us in ending commodity production. It is the key to all our problems. It can only be ended by Socialism, when again the motive for production will be the satisfaction of human needs. Just us now—quickly.

Clifford Groves

50 Years Ago: Where We Stand (2015)

The 50 Years Ago Column from the June 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialists advocate a world where the whole of humanity is united about social relationships of equality and co-operation. The identity of the Socialist even now is not with any national grouping, brand of religion, any alleged ‘race’ or local culture. The Socialist has no loyalties to Britain or America, to Protestantism or Catholicism, to white men or brown men, to Welsh culture or African culture. By his perspective of history, by his knowledge of the economic nature of modern society, the Socialist has gone beyond the shallow allegiances that misdirect the attitudes of those who are still burdened by nationalism, religion or racism. Our argument is that if the majority were Socialists, the security of all men in material comfort in a world of harmony and freedom would at last become a reality.

It is true that the world picture of racism at present is gloomy; it is a running sore of a problem, frequently accompanied by outbursts of physical violence. Apart from its form as widespread prejudice, in some parts of the world it is still maintained as official government policy. Although it is the product of different historical conditions, and although up to now the South African Government has not begun to build gas chambers, apartheid is in direct descent from the Gestapo's ‘final solution’. Racism may be dormant in Hamburg, but its ugliness has reappeared in Smethwick and Notting Hill.

Socialists have no hesitation in taking a stand. We condemn racism. To us it is repugnant. We are opposed to any attitude that discourages the unity of the working class. Even so, our disgust is extended by an understanding of the problem. Disgust without knowledge is impotent. The racists of Johannesburg, Salisbury, Birmingham Alabama or Birmingham, England, are not inherently evil men. They are men who are moved by fear, insecurity, frustration and ignorance, all of which are attitudes conditioned by social forces. The working class of Smethwick have a social history of struggle and insecurity. They are on the defensive, they are anxious to protect jobs, a standard of living, a standard of housing, that they feel has been hard won. Mere condemnation will not help them. They have to realise that they are victims of a universal situation that impinges on members of the working class wherever they exist.

(from editorial of special issue of Socialist Standard on the Race Question, June 1965)

Obituary: Frank Evans (1993)

Obituary from the January 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

Older members will be saddened to learn of the death in October of Frank Evans at the age of 86. Frank Evans was the son of an early Party member who himself joined in 1929. He was one of the handful of members who, before the war, had had a university education. After the war he was active in the old Lewisham branch, contributing to the work of the Party as an indoor lecturer, occasional writer and, above all, as a tutor for the well-attended series of education classes the Party ran for the influx of new members in the immediate post-war period. When he retired from his job with the old London County Council he moved to Somerset where he lived for the rest of his life.

Frank Evans will also be remembered for his controversial contribution to the ferment of ideas in the Party in the early and mid 50s. In a series of articles entitled "The Nature of the Socialist Revolution" that appeared in Forum, the Party's internal discussion journal, he developed a frankly gradualist conception of the coming of socialism. According to him, society, thanks to increasing productivity, was evolving in a more equal and human direction; exclusive property rights, class privilege, the coercive state and money-commodity relations were gradually withering away. The end-result of this process would be a society of common ownership and production solely for use. From this he drew the conclusion that what socialists should be doing was to identify, and identify with, these tendencies rather than seeking to get the working class to take their class struggle against economic exploitation a stage further and establish socialism as a revolutionary political act.

Today few would argue that society is evolving in a more equal and humane direction, let alone a socialist one, but the then recently-established welfare state, the growth of the state sector and state control generally, and the (unexpected) post-war boom gave this view a superficial plausibility in the 1950s. In one sense this was an attempt by someone from a Marxist background to grapple with developments within capitalism which Marxist theory didn't expect to happen, in particular not just the non-appearance of a slump after the war (which was widely expected in the Party) but the actual improvement of the living standards of most workers leading to an attenuation rather than the accentuation of class antagonisms.

Needless to say, these views were highly controversial as they challenged not just the Party's theory of socialism coming through the class struggle but also its refusal to advocate reforms. They were shared, however, by a number of other members, most of whom left in 1955. Frank Evans himself did not leave until 1958 and, no doubt because his father had been a member and his sister still was, always retained a sentimental attachment to the Party and kept in touch with members.

A Knight exposed (1984)

From the June 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard 

Ted Knight, leader of Labour-controlled Lambeth Council, is a politician whose lips produce a stream of radical cliches. Presiding over one of the most impoverished boroughs in London, Knight's response takes the form of left-wing posturing and bureaucratic exercises in reformist futility. Knight and his fellow Labour councillors have a relationship with their NALGO and NUPE workers which is widely acknowledged as one of the worst in London. This is not unrelated to Knight's autocratic style of power, which currently depends on the defection of one councillor to the Labour Party from the SDP; there was no election after the defection and Knight is therefore ruling Lambeth despite the fact that most of the councillors elected were not of his party.

On 28 April the Socialist Party of Great Britain set up a literature stall inside the Friends' Meeting House in Euston, London. The rally which were attending was called A New Social Order For Britain and, in addition to the opportunity to sell and give away socialist literature, over an hour of the meeting section of the event was due to be allocated for speakers from the floor to state their case. So seventeen Socialist Party members entered, talking to people at the literature stall, visiting the other stalls and seeing what ideas they had to offer and preparing to have our say in the discussion period.

From the start, it was a strange event. The politicos were there alright: Camden Labour Party, the Peace Pledge Union, CND, SERA and the Ecology Party. As a group of us entered we saw immediately that this was no ordinary lefty set-up: a procession of harmless-looking folk were doing a "sacred dance" around the hall. While they did the Greenham shuffle, apologetic stewards tried to get the admission fee out of us: £2 to get in ("Well, you do know that Tony Benn's speaking, don't you?") and 70p. for the unemployed, old, young, ill, oppressed—they ended up owing one of our lot £1.40.

Once inside it became clear that this event was an occasion for all sorts of people to search into the recesses of their minds for peculiar ideas to present to those who would listen: Pagans Against Nukes, the Vegan Society, Kingston Natural Healing Centre, Celtic Friends of the Trees, Playworld. Socialists are not unwilling to listen to and learn from such people and, to tell the truth, many of their ideas were considerably more practical than the conventional wisdom of non-fringe thinking which workers are taught to revere. Of course, there were astrologists and religion-pushers and the odd con-man who was clearly there only to earn a few quid by exploiting the gullible. But it was a pleasant atmosphere and it was right that a socialist presence was there to counter the distortions being handed out from the Labour Party stall.

At about two o'clock the public meeting was due to begin in the main hall. Socialists spread ourselves around. A few hundred workers listened as Joan Andrews, the organiser of the event, made it clear that we were here to make plans for an "Alternative Britain". On the platform were Tony Benn (head in hands), Rex Andrews (Quaker), Helen John ("a Greenham woman"), Jonathon Porritt (Ecology Party), Angela Warner (anti-vivisectionist), Guy Dauncey (trendy writer) and, in the chair, Ted Knight. Ted stood up. So did the four rows sitting behind me. Ted cleared his throat to allow a few radical cliches to ascend to his mouth, but before he could do so the people behind were shouting him down: "We don't want Ted Knight to chair this meeting. He's an enemy of working-class people. He evicted us and our mates at four in the morning from our council flats in Brixton."

Ted tried to talk over them, but there was a victory of real feeling over empty rhetoric and the demonstrators were drowning them out. Their story, it seems, is that Lambeth Council used riot police, accompanied by dogs, to burst into the flats of these workers and evict them from their homes. Who could blame them for wanting to see Knight off a platform debating a "new social order"? For nearly an hour the row continued. At one point Guy Dauncey and a few other trendy nice-guys grabbed the microphone and vainly urged the audience to sing a song of peace to drown out the dissenting shouts.

Socialists argued with the demonstrators that the best way to proceed would be to destroy Knight in argument rather than destroy the meeting. One socialist suggested to Knight that the only democratic and honourable thing for him to do would be to leave the meeting. Knight insisted that he would stay and that, despite there having been no vote electing him to the chair, he would tolerate no vote to remove him. Before very long four van-loads of police were on the scene. A vote was taken as to whether they should be brought in; socialists voted against and the vote was lost overwhelmingly.

There was one card left to play as far as the platform leaders were concerned: bring Benn to the microphone. Everyone would listen to Benn. And sure enough, they did. Even the evicted workers—who had been thrown out of their homes on the order of Benn's party—were silenced when the radical opportunist stood to address them. At first the old performer had them eating out of his hands. He had been at a meeting in Brixton with Ted Knight the previous week and collected £2,000 for the miners. It was outrageous to suggest that a leader of Knight's quality could be anything but an upright socialist. Applause greeted his every word and even one or two of the evicted workers of Lambeth felt the revival of blind faith. And then Benn made the big mistake: if the miners were here, he said, and if they could see the behaviour of these noisy disrupters over there, they'd soon sort them out. A threat. "Well, the bloody miners aren't here, mate" shouted a voice and within a few seconds Benn's microphone had been smashed, the stewards were fighting with the demonstrators and the boys in blue rushed into the meeting to defend Tony Benn against the attack of those he incited to violence by making threats on behalf of workers who were not present. (Had the miners been present maybe they would have supported the evicted workers rather than the radical Viscount.)

Benn finished his speech with the microphone volume at full blast and the disruptors safely locked away in Metropolitan Police vans. After Benn came plenty more reformist waffle: Porritt the Ecology-man spoke about the importance of spirit and the Greenham woman was so self-righteously stale that it was painful to listen. Angela Warner of the BUAV made an informative and emotionally stirring speech, showing how capitalism finds it profitable to cause pain to animals and humans for the sake of profits. Of course, her conclusions were reformist, but it would be a great step forward if we could persuade her and her movement to join the real campaign against the profit priority. Guy Dauncey's speech sounded like a psychotherapeutic confession and, in the middle of it, he asked us all to sit for two minutes in silence so that we could contact our inner selves (which, after my lunchtime vegetarian curry, I had been thinking of doing during Tony Benn's speech). Socialists love organised silences because they provide us with an opportunity to do some talking. So, several hundred workers sat in silence while several of us shouted out that "Silence is what the bosses want. It's time to speak up for yourselves". "Knight, Benn and the Labourites are not socialists, but mere defenders of state capitalism. They have no alternatives to offer." "Socialism means a world of common ownership and democratic control. A world without buying or selling or money. The abolition of the wages system." It was an educative silence.

Then came the discussion period. Knight agreed to let each contributor speak for three minutes at the microphone. A few christian lefties complained about the earlier disturbance and said that they had come to be energised and were now feeling bad vibes. A woman who seemed to be from the Bloomsbury Circle advocated Henry George's scheme for land reform. Then came the first socialist, who used his time to expose the anti-socialist case of Knight and Co. Then came a spiritualist from Devon who spent two minutes saying that he felt angry about society and then spent what seemed like a long weekend singing a song which proclaimed that socialists are Anti-Christs. We advised him not to give up his day job. Then, by luck, another socialist was invited to have his say. Bob Moran made clear what sort of a society he wanted to live in and urged those agreeing to find out about and then join the Socialist Party of Great Britain. After listening to five more contributions—including an interesting one from a socialist sympathiser who had met us during the last election campaign and another from a man who said that the only way to end the problems of society was to abolish money—it was my turn.

Let us be in no doubt: there are very many workers who are ready and willing to listen to the case for world socialism and to take it up with enthusiasm. Optimistic we may be but socialists have a message which is irresistible and the most urgent and exciting task of the moment is to work for a speedy termination to the system which enslaves the majority class.

Steve Coleman